US helped Israel with H-bomb - 1980s report declassified

Conceding to a federal lawsuit, the US government agreed to release a 1987 Defense Department report detailing US assistance to Israel in its development of a hydrogen bomb, which skirted international standards.

Israelis are "developing the kind of codes which will enable
them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission
and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic
level,” said the report, the release of which comes before
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's March 3 speech in
front of the US Congress in which he will oppose any deal that
allows Iran's legal nuclear program to persist.

"I am struck by the degree of cooperation on specialized war
making devices between Israel and the US," Roger Mattson, a
formerly of the Atomic Energy Commission’s technical staff,
said of the report, according to Courthouse News.

The report’s release earlier this week was initiated by a Freedom
of Information Act request made three years ago by Grant Smith,
director of the Washington think tank Institute for Research:
Middle Eastern Policy. Smith filed a lawsuit in September in
order to compel the Pentagon to substantially address the
request.

"It's our basic position that in 1987 the Department of
Defense discovered that Israel had a nuclear weapons program,
detailed it and then has covered it up for 25 years in violation
of the Symington and Glenn amendments, costing taxpayers $86
billion,” Smith said during a hearing in late 2014 before
Judge Tanya Chutkan in US District Court for the District of
Columbia.

Smith described in his federal court complaint how those federal
laws were violated by the US in the midst of Israel’s budding
nuclear program.

"The Symington Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of
1961 prohibits most U.S. foreign aid to any country found
trafficking in nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside
international safeguards,” Smith wrote.

“The Glenn Amendment of 1977 calls for an end to U.S. foreign
aid to countries that import nuclear reprocessing
technology."

In November, Judge Chutkan asked government lawyers resistant to
the report’s release why it had taken years for the government to
prepare the report for public consumption.

“I’d like to know what is taking so long for a 386-page
document. The document was located some time ago,” Chutkan
said,
according to Courthouse News Service.

“I've reviewed my share of documents in my career. It should
not take that long to review that document and decide what needs
to be redacted.”

The government’s representatives in the case -- Special Assistant
US Attorney Laura Jennings and Defense Department counsel Mark
Herrington -- initially said confidentiality agreements required
a “line by line” review of the Defense Department’s
report. They later shifted, arguing that its release is optional
and not mandatory, as "diplomatic relations dictate that DoD
seeks Israel's review."

Smith and the US agreed that the government would redact sections
of the report on NATO countries, though the passages on Israel
remain intact.

"The capability of SOREQ [Soreq Nuclear Research Center] to
support SDIO [Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, or “Star
Wars”] and nuclear technologies is almost an exact parallel of
the capability currently existing at our National
Laboratories," said the report, written by the Institute for
Defense Analysis for the Department of Defense.

"SOREQ and Dimona/Beer Sheva facilities are the equivalent of
our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National
Laboratories...[and have] the technology base required for
nuclear weapons design and fabrication."

The report’s authors Edwin Townsley and Clarence Robinson found
that Israel to had Category 1 capability regarding its
anti-tactical ballistic missile and “Star Wars” weapons
programs.

"As far as nuclear technology is concerned the Israelis are
roughly where the U.S. [w]as in the fission weapon field in about
1955 to 1960,” the report said. “It should be noted that
the Israelis are developing the kind of codes which will enable
them to make hydrogen bombs."

In a statement on the report’s release, Smith said Thursday,
"Informal and Freedom of Information Act release of such
information is rare. Under two known gag orders -- punishable by
imprisonment -- U.S. security-cleared government agency employees
and contractors may not disclose that Israel has a nuclear
weapons program."

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s planned address
before the US Congress was controversially arranged by Republican
leadership without consultation of congressional Democrats or the
White House.

The speech will occur weeks before Netanyahu will seek
reelection, and is to center around his opposition to any
agreement with Iran over its
nuclear program, a deal the US -- while levying heavy
sanctions on Tehran -- has pursued despite protests from its
preeminent ally in the Middle East, Israel.

Tehran’s nuclear program is legal under the terms of the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Israel is one of
the few United Nations members that is not a signatory.